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Hobbes
Hobbes is Calvin's stuffed tiger who, from Calvin's perspective, is as alive and real as anyone else in the strip. The interplay between the two title characters, and the question of whether Hobbes was real or not, is what gave the strip its unique personality that lasted mostly untouched during its decade-long run. He can't spell (spelling his name as "Hobs", great as "grat", and creek as "crk"). History Hobbes' first appearance was on November 18, 1985, where Hobbes was portrayed hanging upside-down from a tree after falling for a tuna sandwhich-baited trap laid out by his close friend and co-star of the strip, Calvin. Since then, Hobbes was seen in almost every strip, following Calvin on his adventures, such as trips to the Jurassic and sledging down dangerous slopes. (By the time Bill Watterson wrote the Tenth Anniversary Book, he had changed his opinion about Calvin and Hobbes's first meeting, saying it was unnecessary and even detrimental to the feel of the strip. Much later, it is apparent in several strips that Hobbes and Calvin have known each other their whole lives, including when Calvin was an infant. This contradicted the first two strips, which show Calvin and Hobbes' first meeting. One strip especially shows Calvin claiming that he didn't remember much of his infancy. While Calvin starts going on and on about how he suspects he was being brainwashed when he was very, very young, and asking nobody in particular what he remembered that someone wanted him to forget, Hobbes says "I seem to recall that you spent most of the time burping up." Also, in an earlier strip, Hobbes once muses about some advice his father gave him. The reality of this comment is open to debate.) Hobbes shared his final appearance with Calvin in the final strip published on the 31st December 1995, his last words being: "It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on!" Relationship with Calvin For the most part, Calvin and Hobbes converse and play together, reveling in what is ultimately a deep friendship. They also frequently argue or even fight with each other, though their disagreements are generally short-lived. Interestingly, Hobbes almost never calls Calvin by his name. Instead, he simply uses pronouns when speaking to his human counterpart. Whenever Calvin does his homework, he asks Hobbes to do it for him, but Calvin doesn't notice how Hobbes gets questions wrong (like when he couldn't know a subtraction problem, so he put in Atlanta, Georgia). Hobbes also teaches Calvin in his math homework, but his theories are wrong on one comic where Calvin asks Hobbes what's 3+8, so Hobbes teaches Calvin,"Well first you assign the value as X. X always means multiply, so you take the numerator (that's Latin for "number eighter"), and you put that number on the other side. Then you take 3 from the other side, so what times 3 equals 8 of course, it's 6." Running gags Several of the strip's running gags are centered on Hobbes. The most famous is Hobbes himself, and the question of his reality. To everyone in the strip apart from Calvin (and Hobbes himself of course), Hobbes is just a little stuffed tiger. But with Calvin's wild imagination, Hobbes springs to life. Is Hobbes really a stuffed animal? Or is he actually alive and kicking? Bill Watterson stated that he believes Hobbes to only be an example of different perspectives. He is not a figment of Calvin's imagination, but he is not a stuffed animal that magically comes to life. Often Hobbes ambushes Calvin with an energetic pounce-and-tackle attack, which leaves Calvin bruised and scraped up but not seriously harmed. Hobbes takes great pleasure in his demonstrations of feline prowess, while Calvin expresses keen frustration at his inability to stop the attacks or explain his injuries to his skeptical parents. Another frequently recurring theme is Hobbes' love affair with tuna, which borders on obsessive addiction. Personality Namesake Hobbes is named after 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who had what Watterson described as "a dim view of human nature." Thomas Hobbes is famous for his claim that humans' natural state is a state of war, where "the life of man is, solitary, poore [sic], nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes is much more rational and aware of consequences than Calvin, but seldom interferes with Calvin's troublemaking beyond a few oblique warnings. After all, Calvin will be the one to get in trouble for it, not Hobbes. Origins Watterson based some of Hobbes' characteristics, especially his playfulness and attack instinct, on his own pet cat, Sprite. Hobbes takes great pride in being a feline and frequently makes wry or even disparaging comments about human nature, declaring his good fortune to lead a tiger's life. In Calvin's philosophical ramblings, it is evident that Hobbes is usually Bill Watterson's voice on the subject, whereas Calvin usually seems to echo the sentiments (or lack thereof) of modern America. It may otherwise be asserted that Calvin rather portrays an alter-ego of Watterson. Artistic evolution Hobbes certainly changed in appearance over the strip's run. At the begining of the strip's run, Hobbes was slightly shorter, and his tufts of fur less defined and shorter. He eyes were also having more of a round shape, as opposed to the oval shape of later years. The most notable change, however, were the pads on Hobbes' hands. Hobbes began looking like his current self around mid-1989. In earlier years, Bill Watterson drew the pads on Hobbes's hands as a reminder that they were really paws, but later removed them on the grounds that he found them to be visually distracting. Category:Characters Category:G.R.O.S.S. members